


falling short, going shorter

by chartreuser



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Exes, M/M, Overdose, POV Second Person, i am very sorry i am
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 05:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6691684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At seventeen, you thought: <i>well, shit. This is a bad idea,</i> and it was true. Jack's a bad idea. You were a bad idea. The both of you always were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one sewed-up mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [icosahedonist (teljhin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teljhin/gifts).



> icosahedonist asked: pimms prompt: things you wish you'd said to him
> 
> this is going to mention suicide, and drug use, and everything you'd expect in a fic about young kenny and jack being so goddamned bad for each other but still doing it anyway, yeah? if there are any other links i should be including please message me!

> With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;  
>  And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,  
>  Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,  
>  Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,  
>  Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent  
>  Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken  
>  By the injustice of the skies for punishment?  
>  —W. B. Yeats, The Cold Heaven

 

Jack overdoses at nineteen; you get drafted first. That’s the answer people would get when they ask, and you like it. It’s watered down but everything has to be. This story isn’t yours to tell; isn’t Jack’s either. You have too much of yourself in there and Jack—

Well, Jack wasn’t really there at all, was he?

 

At seventeen you thought: _well, shit. This is a bad idea_.

Jack started self-medicating and you were there for all the times he threw up in the bathroom, your hand buried in his hair. You thought that someone was going to die. Could’ve been you or could’ve been him, that really didn’t matter; you looked at him thinking that the top of the world was both of yours. Of course you thought this at seventeen—what else were you supposed to think? The records were both of yours. A few fucking pills didn’t count for anything.

But maybe it was a few months later and he’s lying on your bed, sweaty hand against sweaty forehead and you start getting scared. You knew how he looked wiped out; with that same stubborn downturn of his lips. Sex and anxiety and sex and anxiety and sex and sometimes it just felt the same to you. Something’s missing, someone’s crying. You think that all these gaps were just Jack. He took too much and a part of him floated away to whatever was left of his brain while you tried to piece him together with everything that was left. You knew you didn’t do a good fucking job, but your best friend wanted your mouth shut so you do it. If they knew how much hockey was tearing him apart they’d take him away. Jack wouldn’t live through that.

So you held his hands until he learned how to stand again but that didn’t mean shit. You know you knelt on the bathroom floor trying to kiss his temples longer than you’ve spent getting rug burn with his cock down your throat. It was how it was. Jack’s anxiety was there and he took care of it, through whatever means necessary, and you took care of the rest of it. The press and the rumours and the pills he shoved at the back of his drawers away from you.

 

At eighteen: one year passed and you got complacent; Jack was getting worse but it meant nothing if the body was still there. You shared hotel rooms with him and you shared the pillows with his tears. He didn’t sleep, back then, so that meant that you didn’t, either. He was still retching into toilet bowls and swallowing alcohol with his pills and you didn’t know what the fuck to say because you thought that you could’ve kept him alive.

He called you up at half past three in the morning and he’d be talking about plays and you’d thought, hey, whatever. At least he was still calling. Someone’s gonna have to take the brunt of Jack’s pain with him and you loved him so much that you did it. If you’ve got the choice you’d be doing it again.

The thing was. Even when he was there you missed him. He spent his eighteen birthday party staring at his hands and cutting crescents into his palm because he was _scared_ and you were scared for him too; you were scared of everything he did, do, didn’t do. You thought about saying it but you’ve seen him without those pills. With all the trembling and the blown out eyes and shame on you for thinking that you could’ve handled this. Shame on you for thinking that he loved you enough to stay.

 

At nineteen you thought about confessing all that. Press a finger to his lips and do it after the final game. Maybe when the both of you were sitting somewhere quiet where the noise wouldn’t have disturbed Jack like it normally did. You’d say, hey, I’m sorry, I think maybe you should get some help, I’ll be there when it gets tough, I’ll be here standing behind you, I’ll be swallowing your pills if that would even help. Hockey’s hockey and your dad’s Bad Bob but I’ve seen you and it hurts and I don’t want you to hurt any further. You had a speech written down and it was cheesy as shit but you wanted him to get better. You wanted nothing to happen because you’d have prevented it. The both of you’ll be in the NHL and Jack wouldn’t be swallowing all these pills dry and maybe he’ll forget about them someday. A bad dream. Faulty memory. Nothing’s as sweet as victory and the both of you kept on winning.

Then Jack had to fuck himself over with all those pills you didn’t stop him from taking and the only person winning was just you.

 

At twenty—when he got out of rehab—you tried to see him. You had that crumpled piece of paper in your wallet all this time but you didn’t take him out because he was—this angry to see you. Like you weren’t there the entire time crying right beside him because he couldn’t stop throwing up or because Bad Bob said something wrong or because he couldn’t get over his fucking addiction to hockey.

So you said: “I loved you,” and there it was. Wrong answer again.

The speech’s there unsaid because you got drafted, Jack overdosed; it’s nice watered down like that, kept like a dirty fucking secret. No one asks you about it because maybe they just don’t care enough. You don’t tell anyone about it because at twenty-five you’re still up in your head at seventeen loving him back—and Zimms—or Jack; well, he’s a different person now.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack says, “I thought we were going to do all of it together.”

You’re patting his shoulder with one hand. The other is wrapped around the glass, tight, it’s not good for you but you know that; you’ve always liked eating away at your own conscience. It’s easy to go back and tell them that you didn’t know this would happen, that you thought it’d be easier if you didn’t let go. But maybe you just didn’t want to. Fair enough, anyway, Jack is Jack and you are you and this was doomed to be messy from the start—so you’re sitting with him in a bar, now, casual hand on casual shoulder and feeling the opposite from being set on fire.

You know that Jack’s got someone else now. He’s actually gotten himself a whole team, Jack Zimmermann and his group of college lackeys. You wonder what they think about you, if Jack’s antagonized you the way you’ve antagonized him, hating and loving and still spiteful, still scorned.

You’re opening your mouth before you can help it. Alcohol makes your lips move looser. The words don’t filter through your brain because why should they? You spent a good chunk of your childhood pressing your hands to his skin pretending like all of Jack’s insults weren’t sincere. They still hurt. Some days you feel like curling your fists into his shirt just to demand everything back. You want to say: _you wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for me._

But you don’t know how true that is.

“The rest of the world thought that too,” you say. “We could’ve found a way. But I guess you just changed your mind, huh?”

 

So he’s playing for the Falcs, now, grinning in Providence and doing press the way he’s always done. The golden boy turning back ‘round to say, _hey, I’m still making it_ , and now your name’s linked back to his like an old adage. Kent Parson and Jack Zimmermann, once, now they’re playing each other instead of playing together, like it was a long time since he’s had your heart in between his teeth.

 

Smith asks, “you okay?”

“Oh yeah,” you say, shrugging your shirt on. The locker room’s empty. Smith is looking at you with his face blank. The two of you have always been the closest, ever since you got the C, you guys are the same age and he’s more like Jack than you’d care to admit, the way that Smith gets increasingly intense or when he presses his lips into a silent line when he’s mad—but it’s not the same. It’s unfair to do this to someone.

He frowns at you. You’re watching him watch you and it’s something you’ve never felt before, the knowledge that someone is searching, and not—seeing past, you suppose, like you’re invisible, or some shit. He’s holding onto his phone, because the bruise on your shoulder is certainly ugly; you’ve gotten into a bar fight and PR’s going to wring your neck for that. There’s a cut on your left rib, something nastier at the back of your hand. You don’t quite give a fuck.

You’re asking, “you gonna call an ambulance?” when he says, “I know you went to see Zimmermann, last night.”

You tell him, “I did,” because there’s no point in lying. You don’t care who the fuck he’s gonna tell. “Something wrong with that?”

Smith looks angry. For half a second you’re afraid, but it’s not because he’s a big guy who knows how to swing a punch. It’s just that you can’t quite deal with emotions anymore, the way that they sink into your gut. You always feel like you have to say something—but the words will come out wrong anyway, like a dead weight. Sometimes you can’t take it back. How was anyone supposed to know if silence was the better option?

Smith’s going to say something, you can tell. You shove your hands into your pockets, and say: “I gotta go.”

 

The baker’s cute. Blond and compact and fast as hell on the ice, you’ve been keeping an eye on him, the same way you never stopped learning how to keep one on Jack.

 

Jack texts you: _i’m sorry._

You don’t text back; you don’t know what he’s sorry for.

 

But you call him at half past two in the fucking morning—because it is what it is, you’re miserable and maybe Jack doesn’t remember all the times you talked him down but you do. You have a scar from when you fell onto staircases after a long hard fight with Jack, pleading, trying not to let the wound fester. You know you did a pretty bad job with that.

“Zimms,” you say, once he bothers picking up. “I’d at least think that I deserved more than a text.”

He’s silent, for a few good seconds, and you’re just about to hang up, pretend this never happened, you drunk dialing your ex at ass o’clock, when someone says, “this isn’t Jack.”

Bitty, of course, judging by the accent and how Jack Zimmermann’s like. “Hey,” you say, turning up the edges of your mouth. You’re fucking petty and you know it. “How are you, Eric? Never thought that Jack would still be keeping you around.”

“I don’t know, Parson,” he says, emphasis heavy on your name, “but I guess I wouldn’t have thought that either, if I were you.”

A laugh tears out of your throat. You know it’s true. “Pretty much. I’ll call him back, then—”

“Parson.”  

Your hand freezes. Something makes you want to listen to what the kid’s got to say.

“Why’d you call him?”

You shrug, before you remember that he can’t see you. “I wanted to know.”

“Know what?”

You fall back onto the sheets. “Doesn’t matter. How is he?”

He’s breathing in deep. “It’s not really my place to tell.”

You make a sound from the back of your throat. “Okay, then. How are you?”

“Uh,” Eric says, halting. “Me?”

“Sure. Being with Zimms is—something else, isn’t it?”

Eric laughs. It’s different to whatever scratched-up noise you made earlier, like someone tore it out of your throat. He sounds shy, instead, almost humble, and you’re thinking, _what wouldn’t I give to be him,_ and, _I’m so fucking glad we stopped_ , all at the same time.

“Jack’s nice. It’s not difficult, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s—how do I put this?” Eric pauses, and you let him, listening to his soft breaths as he shifts, probably moving out of the bedroom. “He’s easy to talk to.”

You can’t deny that you’re surprised. “Is he.”

“Sure,” Eric says. “Look. I know that you two were a long way back. Jack—never mind. The both of you should talk.”

You stare at the clock. The second hand moves so slowly that it might as well not be moving at all. You find the words. “I know,” you say, closing your eyes. “We keep trying.”

 

“Kent,” says Smith the next day, and you fold your arms, stare him down. “Zimmermann is waiting for you outside. In the parking lot.”

You have to admit that it takes you by surprise. Maybe he’s heard about the little exchange you’ve had with his boyfriend. “Right. Thanks.”

“Be careful,” he says, enveloping you in a bro-hug, the kind that you don’t really do anymore. It’s too _no homo_ , and besides, the entire world knows that you’re gay anyway. But this is something else. This is warmer, with a safer touch of reassurance.

You say, “I’m not going to argue with him.”

Smith shakes his head, releases you from his grasp. You haven’t had any friends in a long, long while. “Not of him. For yourself.”

 

Zimms is leaning against your car. He’s wearing a Falcs jersey, which is the most stupid thing anyone can ever fucking do, but it’s okay, he’s out of his mind, you’re out of yours, it’s the same old dance but a few different steps.

“Hey, man,” you say, faux-casual, stepping closer, not too close. “What do you want?”

“Not much,” he says, and you’re avoiding his eyes. The intensity’s not good to fall back into. You would know. Sometimes you wish that it was all reserved for the ice. “Just came to apologise.”

You look back at him. He’s serious. His gaze is latched onto yours and it’s a decade back, you looking at him looking at nothing.

“Okay,” you say. “Gotta start somewhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd because i'm tired it's 8am ;;;

**Author's Note:**

> so after my other kent fic i couldn't stop thinking about this. i couldn't stop wondering about how much it felt to love someone so much and have you hurting yourself, hurting the one you love, keeping it all in until six years later you couldn't stand it so much that you drove that far to massachusetts to ask for a second chance. i'm wondering about the small "i miss you", the angry "you always say that"; just how much bad blood was there? is the blood kent's or jack's or was it the both of theirs, or were they so entangled in each other in this horrifyingly unhealthy way that they couldn't ever tell anymore?


End file.
